Let Dreamers Lie
by madSeason
Summary: They think she's gone, forever ash. She sees them from Heaven, and her tears become their rain. Postseason one. Previously titled When Angels Speak.
1. One: This is Death

**Summary**: They think she's gone, forever ash; she sees them from Heaven, and her tears become their rain. Post-season one.

**A/N**: This was previously a fic titled _When Angels Speak_; the chapters are re-written, the title changed. Please let me know what you think! Your reviews are the reason why I haven't given up _WAS _completely. This story is very loosely based on _The Lovely Bones_ by Alice Sebold, a great novel I'd recommend to anyone. Only the premise is the same; everything else is mine.

**A/N**: I've taken some liberties when writing this, and had some things that happened in the season one finale _not_ happen. Namely, Lianne never came back and Logan never dangled his life on a bridge.

---

_one._

She almost wishes her life would flash through her eyes. She wants to see Lilly unlike the one that's been haunting her for the past year, she wants to see her mother without any scent of alcohol bruising the sides of her mouth, she wants to see herself, everything in tact, every emotion in tact, virginity in tact, smiling and glad and alive. She wants to see life.

She wants anything. Anything to dull the pain. Anything to take her mind off of – anything – to make her feel something that doesn't make her wish she would just finally, finally die.

She doesn't scream. She doesn't give the bastard the pleasure of tasting her fear.

But she cries.

He can't see her tears, can't hear the dull _thud_ of the poisoned liquid falling against the ashen wall, can't taste the terrible taste of acrid water suffocating the lips, like she can. So she lets the tears fall down her face freely, allows them to pool into her ears.

And she coughs.

As the flames begin to advance and the heat blisters the air enclosing her, an unreal amount of smoke smothers her. She descends into a coughing fit, so backbreaking that her body twists and aches long before the flames come in contact with her skin, her skin once so impenetrable, now so soft. Her hair is drenched from her own sweat, moisture ceaselessly falling from her pores.

With each additional breath, her mind loses substance.

"Does it hurt, Veronica?"

His voice sends ice through her heart, and, despite the intense heat, she shudders.

She tries to tell herself that the voice isn't real, that on-sale walky-talkies can't endure the mounting, scorching heat which she feels. The voice is still there, for some reason, perhaps because she can't convince herself to breathe, let alone convince herself she's deviated from reality.

She opens her mouth, and she tries to breathe.

She slowly begins to die.

"Still there, Veronica?"

She tries to tell him that of course she's still there, someone like him can't take away more than she's already lost, she's invincible, everyone's told her so - but when she parts her lips to speak, smoke fills into her mouth and all she can do is cough.

No more speaking. No more trying. She thinks that maybe the smoke is wrapping her mind with its fists.

Quiet for a few minutes, or seconds, or hours, or none of the above. Doesn't matter. Quiet.

And then she listens closely, and she thinks she may be able to hear her heart beat through the muddled air. She listens, quiet, only the throb of her heart, and she listens as each beat is slower than the last.

She listens closer, but the harder she tries to hear her heart, the more her head throbs.

Daddy isn't coming, Veronica. You're going to die, Veronica. Do you like the way you've lived, Veronica?

He won't be able to forgive himself. Daddy won't be able to let himself live. She wishes she could tell him it's okay, she wants him to live, but she can't, won't ever. She knows this now.

No more fists against the walls confining her. No more trying to escape. No more hope, Veronica, because, Veronica, you're a practical girl. You know how this will end.

She's still able to cry, because she knows how this will end, but she doesn't want it to end. All this talk about life, all this talk about wanting to die, and she's only just now realized she doesn't want to. She wants to live. She has people. People now to live with. She wants to stay.

She sees the people in her mind, sees them like she wants to see her life, but she can't think of how they are. She can only think of how they'll be, without her.

Daddy. Daddy won't ever stop crying, even when his face is dry, eyes stoic. Daddy has so much tears built up in him.

These thoughts aren't easy, her mind isn't so strong, she can't simply think. It hurts to think, and it hurts to breathe, but she thinks and she breathes because she never wanted to die so young; she wants to add as many additional seconds, possibly minutes, to her life. She wants to control _something_.

Wallace will finally know what she's felt the year Lilly died, and she wants, more than she wants to avenge this man who's killing her, for him to never feel like that. She knows what it does, how it breaks a person down, to lose a best friend, and she wishes, more than she wishes to see her life, that he'll be better. He'll be stronger. She wishes she never meant so much to Wallace, because if she means as much as he means to her, he'll never be the same. And he will cry. She wishes he wouldn't.

And she's still coughing, as she's thinking of all these people she's leaving behind, still crying, still barely breathing and still hurting like hell.

Lianne will be upset, maybe, might come to the funeral. But she won't be sober, never again. She'll be in the back pew and she'll be sipping vodka disguised as water, and she'll prove then how much she's stopped loving her. She'll cry. She won't mean it.

Now it's getting chilly and she's not afraid, but that's only because emotion is being stripped from her, from red to black, pink to grey. She thinks she might be, should be, afraid, because flames are licking the sides of her container and she's not really breathing anymore, and yet it's cold when it should feel like hundreds of degrees. She shivers but still sweats.

Duncan will cry, and he'll mean it. He'll cry and he'll mourn, and maybe he might sit near the front, maybe by Daddy, maybe he'll be almost as upset as when Lilly died; because she and Duncan, though not soul mates, were close to possibly being friends. They had been friends, almost best friends, the kind of friends that lovers could be (but she can't really remember now – had they made love?). He'll cry, maybe more for the old her than the her that she'd become.

Her entire body is throbbing now, like one single, beating, tearing heart, and she can't remember. She can't remember, so she tells herself, _Veronica Mars. You are seventeen. You are dying._ She remembers herself again, then feels the pain more unbearably, forgets, and reminds herself, _Veronica Mars. You are seventeen. You are dying._

Logan. She thinks that maybe Logan hated her - what had she done, again? – but knows that he loves her. Maybe not like he'd loved Lilly, maybe not like he loves his alpaca, but there's some love, somewhere, somehow, in that split heart of his that he feels for her. He'll forget why he hated her. And he'll cry. Oh, God, Logan will cry.

It's losing its substance, maybe there's none of it left, and she can't think anymore, can only feel, and for once wishes she can't – can't feel.

And because she can't think, can only feel the flames now licking her skin, she may be in Hell. If there's a Hell, it's this, smothered in flames, remembering but without memory, skin burnt to a crisp, screams like echoes in her eardrums but silent to the night.

But it stops suddenly, the pain, everything, and she's not in Hell anymore. She might be saved.

She isn't saved. It only takes a second for darkness greater than the one already wrapped around her to flood onto her, into her, around her.

The pain is gone, but she can't feel anything. Nothing. Not even fear.

Veronica Mars, you are dead.

---

_fin part one_


	2. Two: This is Life

**A/N: **I told you updates would come sooner, didn't I? I can't promies they'll always come this quickly, but I won't be taking months at a time. Anyway, thanks to all of you who reviewed -- honestly, you keep me going at this. Keep it up, guys, I love to know what you think!

_---_

_two._

She's alone when she's dead. It's dark. There isn't anything. She's still for some time, knowing that she's dead and is decided that _this_, whatever this is, is it, _it_, the place where she'll rest forever in eternity.

She's on her back, like she was in the emptied fridge, the one which she'd been suffocated and burnt to death in. There's no pain, no tears to accompany it, and it's the only reason she doesn't still think she's burning.

She moves just as she had on the earth and yet completely different, alive and yet immortal, human and yet not. She can feel herself move but can't see herself. She can hear herself breathe and yet knows there's no need to. And so she briefly assumes that perhaps she's a ghost. But this isn't earth.

Sitting there for eternity, there's nothing, no one but herself, until finally she sees a light, a glimmer of a light, just a dim sense of brightness. It's a kind of relief to see this, whatever it is, because it gives her hope that this isn't _it_, the place where she'll rest forever in eternity. She's never liked the dark.

She won't move because she isn't entirely sure how, so she waits for the light to disappear, but it doesn't. The light is still there. She won't give herself too much hope; she gives it time to disappear. It doesn't.

"Hello?"

She surprises herself; she wasn't sure her vocal chords would be in tact, enduring, operative. They are all three; she can even feel the vibration along her throat when she speaks.

So she says it again, a soft _hello?_, because she likes the feeling of being alive.

And the light is still there.

Proof that this isn't _it_ comes to her in the form of a grandmother she'd only briefly known, her father's mother, Grandma Mars, in exactly the same form as she'd last seen her. She comes to her quickly, suddenly, and the light is brighter in an instant, so she thinks to herself that she should be afraid, would be afraid, of this sudden appearance if she weren't already dead.

"Liddie?" It's a useless word, because of course it's her, but she still can't get used to using her throat without it burning, without her flesh becoming raw from her own screams.

Grandma doesn't answer, because, apparently, thoughts are not meant to be personal in Heaven.

She wants to say something else. She hasn't seen Grandma in years. Other than repeating herself, she can only think of one other thing to say: "Daddy's sorry."

"I know, Veronica," she breathes. "Don't worry, I've known."

"How could you have known?"

Grandma says, "I can see them."

"Who?"

"Everyone."

Silence.

She's trying to understand the meaning of _see_, if it means the same thing that she's known it to mean. She'd believed in angels once, when she was young and her mother had told her stories of the Bible, when she'd gone to Church in a prim, yellow dress each Sunday morning and come home to Lilly sitting on her front steps, Lilly coming in for breakfast, Daddy wondering why Lilly won't eat with her family on Sundays. She'd believed in angels when Lilly died, because she had to believe it, had to believe Lilly wasn't simply _gone_. She stopped believing in angels when she stopped believing in God.

She has questions, so much to learn, already asking, but her questions aren't answered because her angel is walking away, towards the light.

It's time to follow her.

So she follows Grandma, runs to catch up to her.

All this thought about angels, all this beginning to believe they might be real, and her heart is already thrusting against her chest like it wants to fall out, she's sweating as if she were alive, and she's excited beyond belief. They're still walking towards the light, but she can't wait to reach it, has to ask right now –

"Grandma!"

She stops because she can sense it, in the way she can know what she's thinking. She can sense her urgency.

"Grandma."

She waits to catch up to her, and when she's standing in front of her and looking up at her she looks like a child on Christmas morning, asking where the presents are, asking if Santa's come.

"Grandma, where's Lilly?" And even she can hear the smile in her voice.

"Sweetheart, there's so much of Heaven to see," she says lightly, like she's always spoken. "Come with me."

But Veronica doesn't go. She doesn't smile anymore. She sees the way her grandma's eyes don't match her voice, her smile; death hasn't dimmed her sense of perception. She's still the female Bogart of seventeen.

"What is it?" she asks, even though she doesn't have to. Death can hear, can read the insides of her mind.

And when there's no answer, she says, "There's no reason not to be blunt. I'm already dead. How much worse can anything else be?"

A pause, and then Grandma is direct, clear, blunt.

"Lilly's in purgatory, Veronica."

Silence a third time. And then:

"Purgatory?"

"You can't see her, sweetheart. She's not here."

And now she isn't sure, can't know if she's living or in Heaven, because she feels as though she wants to die and yet she could have sworn she already has.

---

She finds out not everyone sees Grandma the way she does; she sees her the way she's used to seeing her, just as everyone else does. Just as her grandfather would, had he been anywhere around. She doesn't ask where he is; she's sure he's in Hell.

"So you see me as a five-year-old?" she asks. It's days later, maybe, or maybe it's an hour later - she can't really know because time is a manmade invention. It's long enough so that she's trying, somewhat, to not think about never being able to see the girl she'd been longing to see since she'd been wiped from the earth.

"No, sweetheart. I've been watching you for years. I see you as you do."

Heaven isn't anything like the Bible says it is. She wonders why, briefly, and then remembers the Bible was handwritten by man. The only certainty she has now, up in Heaven, dead and burnt to a crisp, is that everything she's ever learned, everything man has told her, has been a lie. Man doesn't know a thing.

"No clouds in Heaven?" she asks when all she sees is what she's been seeing on earth.

"Maybe not for you."

And then she learns that Heaven is also individual, it's a different scene for each death, each prior human sees what they want to see. She sees Neptune, and she's surprised; she could have sworn she'd hated the place.

She learns more about Heaven, or is told more about Heaven, and there's a difference because she spends most of her time thinking of ways in which this can be a dream, or a nightmare, or just a mix of both.

"This isn't real, is it?" she finally asks.

She doesn't even look at her grandmother nod her head, doesn't have to listen to her tell her that this is, in fact, real.

She looks into the ground, and decides that this is Heaven, not earth, because on earth she would not be able to see through the asphalt and into the sky.

And, finally, when she thinks she's learned enough about Heaven, or has pretended to learn enough about Heaven, she says, "Let me see them."

She doesn't have to tell her grandmother why she needs so badly to see them. She doesn't have to explain that she needs to see someone. She doesn't need to try to explain what it feels like to know she may never see Lilly again, when all this time the only reason she'd ever held hope in an afterlife was for the fact that she'd be able to see her best friend again.

Everyone knows, in Heaven. It's not personal. That Heaven is perfect is just another lie told by Man.

---

By the time everything is explained to her, by the time she knows the Rules, what she must do, how not to cross any boundaries, the very first time she looks down on earth from Heaven, her father is already driving towards her dead body.

His phone is to his ear, his face skewed into deep creases. He's worried and he doesn't have to hide it, because it's him and Backup in the car, no one else.

"Veronica, if you get this message, please call me back as soon as possible." He puts the phone down.

If she could, she would cry.

The drive isn't long, but it seems longer than her slow, agonizing death as she watches him with two hands on the wheel, calling her phone ten times or more, leaving the same message after each phone call. He lowers the volume of the radio so that all he can hear are the whimpers of the dog in the backseat and the wind falling past the car in bottomless currents.

"Veronica, it's Dad. Call me."

She's alone, has no one to talk to as she watches her father. She thinks she can maybe hear her phone ringing in her car, and knows she can when she realizes her father is only yards away from her LeBaron. The roads are empty; her father is alone.

Mounting, blazing flames are still licking all sides of the house behind which she was murdered; her body is still being torn by the individual flames. He sees the fire first, rising into the night sky and creating a blanket of smoke and light, pulling the night under a blanket of heat.

He takes his phone and dials a phone number which is not hers for the first time that night, dials _911, _asks for the fire department, hangs up minutes later knowing they're on their way.And then his searching eyes finally come in contact with her car, still haphazardly tucked into the telephone pole, her windshield still gracefully shattered into tiny, innumerable pieces, the doors still hanging open.

Upon the sight, he pulls over to the side of the road and comes to a sudden halt, not considering Backup as he falls forward. He gets out and walks towards her car – she isn't there. (She's looking down from Heaven wishing he'd just leave.)

For a moment he's relieved – no body in the car means she wasn't hurt in the accident – but then his mind, still working from its previous thoughts, begins to realize the gravity of her car being rammed into a pole. He turns his head and looks at the house set ablaze, seems to think for a moment, and runs as quickly as he's ever learned how towards the blanket still gripping her body into a death beyond Heaven and Hell.

He calls her name, smoke strapping itself to his lungs as he begins to run through the flames, coughing violently.

He sees nothing through the thick haze of smoke but a cluttered wooden porch succumbing to heat and the torture of flames, and an old, ashen refrigerator at the center.

He seems relieved, and the only tears falling from his eyes are those which are fighting the burning sensation of the smoke pricking his eyes. His tears have been produced by the environment; he is not crying for her.

Not yet.

---

She sees him, just up the road.

The piercing sound of a fire truck begins to grate through his eardrums, and his eyes follow the truck as it passes him. He turns around to watch the ascending flames.

"Goodnight, Veronica," he whispers.

He continues walking up the road as he whistles _Whiskey Lullaby_.

---

The air is affectedly still, quiet, once the heat is quenched and the flames are gone. There is an acrid smell, a taste of ash that burns the tongue. Smoke is still plugged into the sky, but it is less ominous, less spiteful now that flames don't scream beneath it.

Her father is sitting across the street, beside her LeBaron, when he sees two firemen walk towards him, their faces black, the skin beneath noticeably rougher than what he'd seen when he'd first caught a glimpse of them as they dutifully rushed towards the fire. He stands up and meets them halfway, and they stand in the middle of the street without paying much attention to the fact.

"It was just a fire," they tell him. "There's nothing but burnt wood and washing machines. You have nothing to worry about."

Her father stares at them, contemplates their words, and then he looks back at her car still tucked into the pole, its glass windows still sprinkled across the grass.

"Are you sure?" he finally settles on.

"Yes."

Again there's a moment of silence as she watches her father consider the weight of their words. He should feel relieved, he's sure. His daughter is safe. And yet –

"Then why is her car crashed across the street?" There's a bitter lining of anger nestled in the tone of his voice, but he isn't brining it to its full potential; right now, there's no use. Not yet.

The two men look at each other, and one mutters, "That's a matter for the police, Keith."

Now, _now_ the anger rises.

"A matter for the _police_?" he spits, his voice mounting in the bitterness swimming in his skin. "Adam, do you even realize what you're saying? Do you realize what the hell you're saying?"

"Keith, there's--"

"My daughter could not have gone far!" he screams, his voice echoing through the silence still hanging. "My _daughter_, Adam!"

"There's no reason to assume the worst," the man continues from before, his voice set firmly to convince him.

"Do you think I _want _to assume the worst?" His voice is lower now, no longer yelling, but it's callous, stinging. "Do you think it was my _decision_ to stumble upon my daughter's smashed car across the street from a fucking fire? Do you-" He stops as his voice is caught in his tears, and he looks past the men and towards the house as he wipes away the tears from his eyes vigorously.

"Your daughter is fine, Keith, I'm sure of it."

"I can't--"

"Veronica is fine. Go home, rest, wait for her. Hell, she's probably waiting for _you_."

"Adam--"

"Veronica is fine."

And so he nods, walks away, into his car, and begins the drive home as his daughter watches from Heaven, trying to tell him she won't be waiting for him when he gets back.

---

Three days – it takes three daysfor the fire department to find her body beneath the heaps of rubble already beginning to rot her away.

There is no hesitation, no fumble, no stutter as they decide who the skeleton belongs to; they call Keith Mars, who has been waiting for his daughter to come home for three days since.

She watches as her father's strained eyes open suddenly at the first sound of his phone ringing from his desk in Mars Investigations, his arm reaching for the phone before he can even comprehend that he is awake.

"Mars Investigations," he mutters into the phone routinely, dully, so unlike the man he was three days before. She watches as he struggles to hear every word precisely, watches as his eyes suddenly, inexplicably light up.

"You found her?" His voice is a whisper, a swift breath of hope, and he gets up from his seat and already moves towards the door. "Where is she? Is she alright?"

She wants to look away. She would give anything to look away, ignore her father's fleeting, blissful ignorance, and continue the day as though her father's wasn't about to collapse. But she finds that her eyes won't move, that her eyes seem to be pasted to the scene beneath her. She finds that she must watch – and so she does.

Her father's step swaggers as the man on the other end of the line mutters something into his ear, and the phone slips from his hands and clatters to the floor. There is a moment of disbelief, a moment of complete muteness, until it snaps and he shakes himself back into awareness. He picks up the phone and puts it to his ear.

"You – she – what was that?" But his voice is still strong, still solid as though the words drumming against his ears were mistaken.

He listens for another moment, and he knows they were not mistaken. This she can tell as she sees her father's first tears for her string the edges of his eyes, as his hands begin to tremble softly, the wounding beat of his heart almost audible from Heaven.

"You can't be sure it's her, right?" he whispers into the phone. "You can't know--"

A pause. An intake of breath.

"I know what I said – I know what came past my own lips, Lamb. I _know_ what I said better than you do! But you said--"

His hands tremble more than softly, now – his phone almost falls to the floor a second time.

"If you don't know who it is, then how the hell can you assume I do?"

His phone does fall again as his hands won't stop trembling, and he quickly picks it back up and sets it against his ear.

"You can't know it's her until it's _proven _to be her!" he finally yells, finally screams, and then hangs up.

He drops the phone to the floor a third time but doesn't bother picking it up; he walks out the door and into his car.

But before he starts the engine he motions the sign of the cross, _in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit_, and prays that his little girl is okay.

And when he's finished praying, he starts the car and begins to drive towards where her body lies.

---

There's a frenzy just across the yellow tape which surrounds the crime scene -- the crime scene she can't yet comprehend is set up around her body, her car, her ashes.

Her father's car comes to a halt just behind this frenzy, this sudden media circus, and he slams the door behind him as he demands, to no one in particular, "Where is it? Where's the body?"

Nobody bothers to answer, though those along the edge of the crowd turn their heads curiously and give him a glance of acknowledgement. He ignores the few stares and pushes his way past the crowd, overlooking the annoyed cries of the people he pushes past to get to his daughter.

When he reaches the yellow tape, they let him through without a word.

"Damn it, Lamb, where the hell is the body?" he demands once again as he sees the sheriff speaking with a coworker. "And how the hell do you know it's her?"

His voice is clear; tears no longer edge the corners of his eyes. She watched before as he wiped his tears in his car and covered his skin with the best mask of resilience he could gather.

"I need you to stay calm, Keith," Lamb replies as he walks towards her father. For once, she could not hear a single tone of resentment, could not take notice of a single drop of sarcasm falling past Lamb's jagged lips.

"I am calm!" her father yells, panic lining his voice and betraying his own statement. "Given the circumstances, I'd say I've been pretty damn _calm_!"

"Keith, maybe--"

"I want to see it now." His voice is persistent, cold. Lamb grudgingly nods.

"Okay."

And so Lamb begins to lead him past dozens of officers, towards the building now blackened and smelling entirely of soot and demise. The walk is silent, and longer than she'd imagined it should have been. They step past piles of ash, the bottom of their pants becoming plastered in black by the remains of the fire. And then Lamb stops, and then so does her father, when they come to the center of what was once the back deck, in front of a black box she knows to have been the refrigerator she died in.

"She's in there."

Her father steps towards it, but Lamb stops him with his hand.

"Listen, Keith, there's something you should know. I really don't advise you to look at the body."

"Why? Why the hell would you call me if not to--" he stops, takes in a deep breath, "to identify her?"

Lamb hesitates, glancing behind him fleetingly before resting his eyes back on Keith. "We think it's her. I'm sorry, but the facts add up to the body being Veronica. But we can't tell from her body. There's no way of knowing who this person is."

"If you can't tell, then it can't be--"

"Let me rephrase," Lamb interrupts, clearing his throat and dodging her father's glare by averting his eyes. "It's Veronica, almost definitely. She's been missing for three days, her car is in front of this very house, and even you said yourself you thought she might be in the building. It's Veronica--"

"Please stop bullshitting, Lamb. Just--"

"Listen, Keith, this isn't even protocol. You shouldn't even be here. But I called you out of respect, for both you and Veronica, because I realize I haven't given much of it lately. And what I'm trying to tell you is that if this is Veronica – _which it most probably is_ – you won't want to see it."

Her father is silent for a moment, almost contemplative. And then he mutters, "I don't care. Let me see her."

And so Lamb does.

Her father steps towards the refrigerator, and, upon looking inside, he falls to his knees and vomits at its side.

From Heaven, she looks at her corpse for the first time and freezes at the sight.

She has no more body, no more flesh, simply bone – bone crisp and blackened, just like the rest of the entities surrounding her. Her organs are spilled around her, no longer enveloped in her frame, and only now does she realize that there's a terrible stench of burning, although everything around her body is already _burnt_. She's hideous, not human – her body has no identity, no face. And for this, she wants to cry.

Lamb is saying something behind Keith, probably telling him to leave the body now that he's seen it, but neither she nor her father is listening.

He reaches into the fridge and touches the remains of her body, and behind him there's more shouting, a woman telling him that he's compromising the remains, but it's ignored. He cups his hands around her bones and he pulls her out, pressing her body lightly against him as he suddenly lets out a terrible sob, breaking the stillness of the sky. His mask of resilience is shattered, and he begins to rock her body back and forth, tears spilling out of every corner of his eyes, washing onto her, onto himself, onto the ashes beneath them. He rocks her back and forth gently, whispering to her, telling her he's sorry.

Behind him, Lamb shakes his head and begins to walk away. Before he can leave, however, her father looks up towards him.

"You can't be sure it's her!" he cries, still rocking her back and forth, sobs escaping his throat. "You can't be sure! The body…"

And again he breaks down. He sobs harder as he clutches onto her, his head buried in her corpse, holding her body closer as his sobs become louder. Those around him are quiet as they stare, some curiously, some sympathetically.

Her father doesn't notice. Later, he will fight; later, he will strengthen himself and show the world he is okay. Later.

Right now he simply kneels in the dirt, under the starry night sky, his tears a heavy downpour, and holds his only daughter in his arms. He waits for her to wake up and cries harder when she doesn't.

---

_fin part two._


End file.
